Great to see that this Roses pack won the Starpack Gold Environment Award.  The judges said

 “This entry is a winner because the design provides a 45% packaging weight reduction, allows for a more cost effective supply chain and has been developed to provide the strength and stability provided by a tin, but in a carton” 

Personally I really like this pack and indeed wrote about it last November  (Cadbury replaces Roses tin with cardboard box) when it was first launched in Tesco’s. 

It’s a shame, but I heard just a few weeks ago that this pack was being withdrawn.  It appeared to have everything going for it, so why is it being withdrawn? Comments at the time hinted that although consumers talk about wanting to be green the reality was a little different – I’m not sure I really agree with that.

Outside of the packaging industry who knew about the pack or its reasons for being there?  I certainly didn’t see any adverts or publicity for it.  I think Cadbury’s really missed a trick here, this could have been a great opportunity to engage with younger consumers.

A real missed opportunity!

Well it would appear to be the case in certain sectors of the market.

German retailer Penny Markt has announced that it will be moving a range of its own beverages from PET bottles to aluminium cans.  They appear to be claiming that when you look at the whole life cycle of the product they feel that aluminium cans are more environmentally friendly, or should that be less environmentally damaging.

Penny Markt are justifying their move back into cans with claims that new can designs now mean that 30% less material is used, that the recycling rate for aluminium cans in Germany have risen significantly and that they can also achieve savings as the cans stack better than the PET bottles they are replacing and also chill much faster – therefore saving energy and money.

The full article written by David Vink of European Plastics news makes an interesting read and gives a good background to the German drinks market.  Penny Markt obviously feel they are doing the ‘right thing’ and others in their market appear to be preparing to follow, but who is ultimately right?

If you talk to PET manufacturers they will have you believe that PET is less environmentally damaging than other packaging materials – if you talk to the glass industry then they are of course the most environmentally friendly – if you talk to the aluminium can producers they will equally justify themselves.

I believe the answer is very much ‘horses for courses’ in other words it really depends on not only the products you are looking to package, but also the full life cycle of the packaging, including the transport of the empty container and the disposal of it after use.  If you need help with making the most environmentally friendly decisions for your products, then don’t forget that we have two Chartered Environmentalists who can help, so why not contact Design Cognition and see how we could help make those seemingly difficult decisions easy!

We are running a 1 day Pharmaceutical Packaging training course (Introductory level), which should be of interest to some of you.

By following the link below you will be able to download a PDF ’flyer’ & Registration form.

NB Anyone interested needs to be quick because we only have a couple of places remaining.

Do you work in the pharmaceutical industry on the ‘periphery’ of packaging, working for example in Production, Marketing, Purchasing, Design or QA etc , and need to find out more about packaging, but without having to attend a lengthy 3 day training course? Or perhaps you are a Packaging Technologist new to the area and want to gain a better understanding of pharma issues and opportunities?

If so, then this ONE DAY TRAINING COURSE could be for you! 

It’s being held on 14th October 2010 at Biocity Nottingham, UK

Find out more here:   Pharmaceutical Packaging Training Information

Every day millions of patients fail to take their medications as prescribed by their doctor. Medication non-adherence is a problem that disrupts the healthcare system in many ways, leading to patients failing to receive full treatment benefit. Non-adherence can lead to hospitalisation and even death.

The root of this problem is human behaviour. Even though we are “creatures of habit”, we often lose momentum when taking medications, or do not always understand or appreciate the benefits. Subsequently, patients often tell an ‘untruth’ to mask the fact and avoid embarrassment, whether non-compliance was accidental or planned.

Just follow the link to read the full article on ‘How Can Intelligent Packaging Best Aid Patient Compliance?’

Media Enhanced Packaging Solutions - 'raise the game'

The US-based Digimarc Corporation has recently been working very closely with New Jersey-based Catalent Pharma Solutions, a leading provider of innovative packaging solutions to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and consumer healthcare industries to take interactive pharmaceutical packaging to the ‘next level’. It has licensed its mobile visual search software that, together with it’s leading-edge Chroma watermark printing technology, will allow Catalent to deliver new Media Enhanced Packaging solutions to its clients worldwide that will instantly connect consumers to a range of network services from printed packaging, inserts, and labels using smart phones and other digital devices.

Digimarc’s mobile software enables the phone’s camera to “see” digital data that has been embedded into all forms of printed materials, including advertisements, editorial content, brochures, posters, product packaging, labels and more. Unlike 2D barcodes or QR codes, the digital codes do not take up precious space on packages, and they are imperceptible to human senses, but can easily be detected by computers, networks, and today’s most popular smart phones. So they not only open up all sorts of possibilities for more advanced covert counterfeiting measures to be taken, but also for additional patient and Healthcare Practitioner (HCP) information, advice and interaction.

You can read a more information at www.digimarc.com and www.catalent.com

We are really passionate about helping our clients identify and implement new and exciting technologies so why not give us a call now and see how we can help you – +44(0)115 8461914

You can find other related Design Cognition articles on ‘Intelligent’ packaging & technology here:

Design Cognition Technology Insights & News

Chris Penfold

Are you new to packaging or working on the edge of the packaging arena and you’d like to know more about the basics of packaging? But can’t afford huge amounts of time away from the office to attend a full in-depth course? If so then this course may be for you. It will give you a broad overview in a condensed format that will help you gain a better appreciation of all of the relevant issues to enable you to do your job better.

For more information on this or other training courses we are running please visit Design Cognition Training

Design Cognition are pleased to announce that we have added a new course to our already popular training program.

In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, effective branding is essential. Our branding/shelf impact course will give hints, tips and pointers on how to make your product stand out on shelf through effective packaging. It will explain how to transform your good brand into a GREAT brand and help take your products to the ‘next level’.

For more information on this or other training courses we are running please visit Design Cognition Training

Here’s how ‘Eco Warrior’ and ‘Gaia Capitalist’ David de Rothschild made his catamaran ‘Plastiki’ out of recycled PET bottle packaging -- turning waste into resource and into an (almost) completely recyclable boat, that he then sailed from San Francisco to Sydney.

You can read the related article I wrote earlier today here: Sailing through the Plastiki soup in search of Paradise

Chris Penfold

Plastiki - David de Rothschild's yacht made of recycled PET bottles

As we have discussed in previous posts, there is a huge and ever-increasing mountain of rubbish growing in the middle of the Pacific, like a giant festering ’soup’, much of which consists of plastic packaging waste. This has had a massive knock-on affect in the  form of polluted beaches on islands throughout the South Pacific. See our previous article: Great Pacific Garbage Patch article

David de Rothschild is a man on a mission. The offspring of the wealthy banking family, he is one of a new breed of environmental crusaders and entrepreneurs that some are calling ‘Gaia capitalists’. ‘Gaia’ in mythology was the primal Greek goddess of the Earth and aptly a ‘gyre’ in oceanography is any large system of rotating ocean currents (source: Wikipedia).

To highlight the Pacific issue and raise it’s profile in mainstream media, De Rothschild decided to use his family’s high profile  (& money) to build a yacht made entirely of recycled plastic bottle packaging, which he named ‘Plastiki’ (making reference and tribute to the late Thor Heyerdahl’s papyrus Kon-tiki raft which crossed the Pacific back in 1947). Over a four month period he sailed this 60ft catamaran from San Francisco to Sydney, where he landed last week. But his exploits are no shallow ploy to fill aimless days with fun and adventure.

De Rothschild and his ‘Gaia’ friends are driven by a combination of social conscience and economic pragmatism, seeking a ‘paradigm shift’ in the way we live and desecrate our planet. They espouse a new form of capitalism that factors in the environment and social wellbeing as a cost. It considers protecting the environment not only as a moral issue but as a set of design challenges to correct inefficiencies that make the capitalist system unsustainable. Waste, for example, is considered the result of inadequate thinking. If you are smarter about it, and create products that work properly, then you shouldn’t have to throw anything away at the end – should you? The group include Chad Hurley (33) who with his co-founder, sold YouTube to Google for $1.6Bn and has since ploughed some of his fortune into the Green Products Innovation Institute and Jeffrey Skoll, worth $2.4Bn, who wrote the business plan for eBay and has set up the Skoll Foundation to encourage ’social entrepreneurs’ to play a greater role in developing a better world (source: The  Sunday Times).

These are ‘game changers’, who see solutions where others see problems – a new entrepreneurial revolution – one of collaboration something that de Rothschild calls ‘Planet 2.0′. So I feel that we will be hearing a lot more from this ‘band of brothers’ in the future. They mean to ‘rattle some cages’, get us all to think differently and make a real impact by influencing things at ‘the top’. They have a point! Can we really carry on the way we are? For a really ’sustainable future’, for our children and their children’s sakes, things have to change a lot quicker.What do you think?

Chris Penfold

There's no such thing as a free launch

The trouble with television programmes like High Street Dreams and Dragons Den, is that they only provide a
‘snapshot/soundbite’ of branding and the product development process, making it all appear oh-so-easy to the average ‘personon the street’. In reality, it’s a complicated process and there are a number of steps involved that should be considered before even thinking about approaching a branding or design agency and spending ‘hard-earned’ cash.
At Design Cognition we routinely get approached by all manner of entrepreneurs and small business owners who have very limited experience of branding and New Product Development (NPD). So we thought that we ought to provide some ‘pointers’ for those of you new to this arena, to get you to ‘stop and think’ and focus on what it is you are actually trying to achieve! It’s not in your interests or ours to develop products that have a high probability of failure.

So here are some fundamental questions to ask yourself, before you even think about branding & packaging:

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